


if paul were the ocean, she was the sky

by thethirdphiladelphiavireo



Category: Black Friday - Team StarKid, The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals - Team StarKid
Genre: Black Friday Spoilers, F/M, Fluff, emma has commitment issues, fluff with a sort of angsty ending??, look i wrote this in like two hours here you go
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-22
Updated: 2020-03-22
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:15:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23269789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thethirdphiladelphiavireo/pseuds/thethirdphiladelphiavireo
Summary: They were both free. They were both whole. They were both beautiful on their own. And somehow, when they were together, Emma felt more free and brighter than she ever did on her own.Or, Emma deals with realizing that Paul has become important to her.(Emma and Jane's backstory taken from TGWDLM, story set during the events of BF)
Relationships: Paul Matthews/Emma Perkins
Comments: 20
Kudos: 109





	if paul were the ocean, she was the sky

_ “Well, we haven’t put a label on it yet. ” _

Emma turned her earlier words over in her head as she scrubbed her hands in the kitchen sink, coating her hands in sweet, sugary-lemon smelling hand soap. It was the kind of smell Jane would’ve liked, she thought, and she wondered if it had been bought and squirreled away in the cupboard since before the… She couldn’t finish the thought. She wondered if maybe Tom just kept buying the same brand of soap that Jane had always bought, clinging to the clean, familiar smell even as it flowed out of his hands and swirled down the grim, cold drain. 

Tom's house was… Well, it wasn’t exactly what she’d pictured. Maybe that was because she’d really been thinking of it as  _ Jane’s _ house. She’d expected it to look straight out of a suburban mom’s Instagram, clean and white and full of fluffy, tiny chairs and pastel throw pillows. Instead, she’d found a house that was somehow simultaneously sparse and cluttered, empty and messy. The curtains were all drawn, a few of the light bulbs needed replacing, and a pile of unopened bills littered the glass stovetop. 

Still, Emma could see traces of her sister around every corner. Vases of now wilted flowers dotted the wooden shelves in the living room. The rooms were painted in soft, soothing whites and greys and sky blues, giving the dim space a bit of lightness. Earlier, when she’d first come in, Emma had seen a little painting of a beach that she’d done in Guatemala framed and standing on a little coffee table.

Seeing that painting had made her heart stop. She’d turned away immediately, busying herself with talking with her nephew and trying to hide the fact that her hands were shaking. Really, it wasn’t even that  _ good _ of a painting—that had just been a hobby she’d picked up to fill the lonely hours she spent overseas. She’d sent it to Jane as a peace treaty of sorts when she told her sister she wouldn’t be coming to her wedding. She hadn’t expected Jane to keep it for all the years. But there it was, innocently taunting her.  _ She never stopped caring about you. She missed you. She wanted you to be a part of her life _ .

Tom had something to cling to. He had this house, he had his son, he had everything Jane had left behind. 

Emma? Emma had nothing. When she’d left, she’d meant to never look back. She hadn’t kept any knick knacks from growing up, she’d burned— _ God, she’d burned _ —all the pictures she’d ever had from growing up with Jane. When she left, she’d thought she’d freed herself, no longer tied down by anything. There’d been no one reaching out for her, no one trying to keep her grounded except for one person, and now that person was—

Emma shut off the water and reached for an embroidered towel. 

Now Emma had nothing, and no one, to cling to.

Well, maybe not.

“ _ Well, we haven’t put a label on it yet. _ ”

Emma could hear Paul and Tim talking in the other room. After getting over the initial blunders of their first conversation, Emma had been surprised to find out Paul was actually kinda good with kids. He’d explained to her that he’d been babysitting his friend Bill’s daughter for years, and that the experience must’ve paid off. Paul had always been a good listener, and honest without talking down to people, and that seemed to translate well to getting a kid to like you. Tim had been recounting a play-by-play summary of his favorite cartoon to Paul for what must’ve been nearly half an hour by now, but she could still hear an alertness in Paul’s voice as he asked Tim questions and laughed at the boy’s jokes.

“... that’s why he’s my favorite. I want his action figure so bad!”

Emma turned her head to better listen in to the conversation that was happening in the other room. It sure didn’t sound like Tim was talking about Tickle-Me-Wiggly.

“Oh,” Paul’s even voice floated around the corner. “Well, maybe Santa will put that guy in your stocking this year!”

“You mean my dad? I know Santa isn’t real.”

“Uh…”

Emma smiled at the panicked edge in Paul’s tone. He was so emotive with everything about him, from the way he spoke, to his posture, to his stupidly beautiful crystal blue eyes. It was endearing. 

Paul cleared his throat. “Maybe your dad will get that toy for you,” he continued.

“I don’t think so,” came Tim’s response, along with a despondent sigh. “He doesn’t really like listening to me talk about the show. He’s been really busy lately.”

Emma clenched her fists around the towel in her hands.  _ Jesus, Tom, really? _ No wonder Tim had been so angry this morning. 

(If Emma had been in a more sympathetic mood, she might’ve thought back on that pile of bills, on the fact that Tom had had to leave his teaching position after Jane’s death, and on the 49.95 price tag that all those Sniffles or whatever the fuck they were called were always singing about on the radio. But ever since she’d learned that no, Tom didn’t want her to be part of his life, and, no, he wouldn’t be inviting her back unless he was totally out of options again, she’d been in a  _ decidedly unsympathetic _ mood.) 

“... Okay,” she heard Paul mutter from the living room. Then, she heard him say, louder, “I’m going to help your Aunt Emma get some popcorn started. Want to pick out a movie and get it ready?”

“Sure!”

When Paul came into the kitchen, he was rubbing his hand over his face, a dark shadow over his brow. They both knew what Tom had left to buy this morning, and it wasn’t a toy from Tim’s favorite show. She wasn’t the only one who was angry with Tom’s treatment of his son, it seemed. “We need to hit ToyZone before Christmas,” he whispered. 

Emma nodded. “I heard what you guys were talking about in there. Do you remember the name of the action figure?” she whispered back.

Paul nodded and whipped out his phone. “I’m gonna make a note so I don’t forget.”

Emma, in the meantime, popped a bag of popcorn into the microwave and poured it out into a bowl once the shrill  _ beep _ rang out. Paul wove around her through the kitchen, popping the leftovers they’d brought into Tom’s mostly barren fridge. He took the empty bag and threw it into the trash while Emma grabbed the bowl. 

They headed back to the living room. Tim told them what he’d picked to watch first. Emma smiled softly when she put down the popcorn and saw Paul in the corner of her eye leaning over the back of the couch to give her nephew a high five. Tim was grinning a big, toothy grin, wider than she’d seen all day. It was Jane’s smile—something else he must’ve gotten from his mother.

Tom had Tim. If he didn’t want Emma around, who did Emma have?

“ _ Well, we haven’t put a label on it yet. _ ” 

Emma’s smile fell from her face. She went through the motions of settling herself in on the couch, tucking her legs beneath herself and curling up against an armrest, but her thoughts were hard at work elsewhere.

“ _ Well, we haven’t put a label on it yet. _ ”

She’d looked at Paul’s face when she’d said it.  _ Here we go _ , she’d thought to herself. It was bound to happen sooner or later. It had happened with everyone else in her life. They’d always wanted more,  _ more _ from her: her parents, her friends, her lovers. They’d always wanted more affection, more affirmation; they’d always been grasping at her, desperately trying to make her stay. They’d wanted her to be more  _ Jane- _ more present, more focused.

They’d begged and begged in a million ways until they’d finally seen that she wasn’t going to give them what they wanted. And then the begging stopped. It always stopped. On one hand, Emma was always happy when the pressure was lifted. On the other… well, no one seemed to ever stick around for long after they came to that realization.

_ No one except Jane _ , she thought. Jane, the sister who'd let her go, who had helped her pack her bags when she decided to fuck off to South America. Jane, who’d never stopped telling Emma that, no matter what, she was always welcome.

As for Paul… she didn’t want to lose Paul. But she couldn’t give him what she thought he’d want. She couldn’t surrender her freedom.

She’d thought about all of this when she’d said it.

“ _ Well, we haven’t put a label on it yet. _ ”

_ We’ve been going out for six months. _

“ _ Well, we haven’t put a label on it yet _ .”

_ I’ve already taken over half of his closet space _ .

“ _ Well, we haven’t put a label on it yet. _ ”

_ Whenever I wake up before him in the morning, I roll over and just look at his face, look at its lines and its shapes, until he starts to wake up. I’m too afraid to look at him in the same way when he’s awake, because I’m scared that he’d see just how much I love him, and that then he’d start to get  _ **_expectations_ ** _. _

“Well, we haven’t put a label on it yet.”

As soon as she’d said those words, she’d tensed up and held her breath, waiting for his response. 

And, magically, he’d taken it in stride. 

Paul, her beautifully, wonderfully expressive Paul, the Paul who couldn’t take his heart off his sleeve if he tried, hadn’t seemed bothered one bit. She’d wanted to cry with relief. Finally, here was someone who wasn’t demanding  _ more _ . If Tom and Tim hadn’t been there, she would’ve grabbed Paul by his adorable scarf and dragged his face down to hers, kissing the life out of him. She would’ve pressed herself to his front so tightly it would’ve been like they were melding into one, the edges where she ended and he began becoming more and more blurry until you couldn’t’ve disentangled them at all.

It was terrifying.

All her life, Emma had been running from the people that had so desperately wanted to _ take _ from her. But, here she was, wanting to  _ give _ everything to this man. This gorgeous, funny, understanding, caring man, who never asked for her to be anything but herself. 

Emma turned away from the screen and looked at that painting again. It showed a sunset over the waters of a Guatemalan beach, pinks and yellows fading into crystal blues, a dazzle of color and light. Emma remembered how she’d felt on that beach when she’d painted it. She remembered the feeling of the breeze through her hair, the sand underneath her toes, the salty air in her lungs. She’d been totally alone that evening. She’d never felt more alive, or more free. It was her most perfect memory, and she’d never thought that it could be improved.

But now, she wondered what it would’ve been like to have a partner on that beach. Someone to wrap themselves around her and shield her bare arms from the wind. Someone to dance with down on the shoreline, keeping time to the waves. Someone to kiss as the sun beat down on them, to kiss and kiss until all the air had left her lungs, until her head was spinning, until it felt like she was soaring through the rose-tinged azure sky.

Could Emma feel more free with someone at her side than she could alone? Was it possible for someone to prop her up, to help her run and leap and  _ fly _ , rather than chain her down?

She saw the beach again in her mind’s eye, the colors of the sky flashing and bouncing off of the calm waters. The light of the sun had been _so_ _so_ _bright_ that she couldn’t tell where the horizon even was, where the line was drawn between ocean and air. As she’d placed paint to canvas, she’d smeared the colors into one another, watching them mingle and mix at the end of her brush.

A jolt shot down Emma’s spine.

If Paul were the ocean, she was the sky.

They were both forces of nature in their own right. Paul was normally calm and tranquil, like that beach had been, but when he felt especially happy or angry, he couldn’t contain it. He bounced and bubbled, churned and rumbled, and had no problem expressing how he felt. His sunny smile lit up her heart like nothing else, where his stormy silence (though never directed at her) sent shivers down her spine.

At the same time, Emma couldn’t be pinned down. She danced and fluttered just out of reach. She couldn’t be caught, couldn’t be contained. But Paul hadn’t tried to catch her. He was happy just to watch her be herself. It was when Paul was most unaware, when he was at his calmest, that she couldn’t resist sneaking towards him and giving him a soft caress, ruffling his waters and stirring up his waves. 

They were both free. They were both whole. They were both beautiful on their own. And somehow, when they were together, Emma felt more free and brighter than she ever did on her own. 

Emma had an inner light. A shining light that everyone had been trying to soak up since she could remember. But Paul wasn’t trying to take her light for himself. He reflected it back at her, ten times stronger.

The coach creaked next to her. She started and turned, surprised by the noise. It was the noise of Paul settling in next to her, but not quite touching her. She watched his eyes flicker between her and Tim, who was at this point totally engrossed in the film on the screen, humming along to a song playing from the speakers. Finally, his gaze settled on her.

“Are you okay?” he murmured, barely audible. “You’ve been spacing out for, like, ten minutes.” His breath ghosted over Emma’s exposed skin, giving her goosebumps through her sweater. She gazed at his worried blue eyes, at his drawn eyebrows, and at the way he positioned himself on the couch, tenderly shielding her from Tim’s gaze while not encroaching on her space.

_ God, you’re amazing. _

Emma’s heart squeezed and sung and soared in her chest. She placed a hand on Paul’s shoulder. “I’m fantastic,” she murmured back, sliding the hand up to cradle his jaw. With one more glance back at the still totally oblivious Tim, she brought his lips down to meet hers, kissing him softly. 

They traded quick, gentle pecks, lips barely moving over one another. Paul smiled and sighed against her, one of his arms coming up to rest on her waist and lightly rub circles into the soft fabric of her sweater. Emma moved her hand to the back of his head, slowly carding her fingers through his short hair, and imagined that they were somewhere on that Guatemalan beach, surrounded by a salty breeze and the distant sound of ship bells, with cool water lapping at their toes while the sun looked on them warmly…

“This is the best part!” Tim exclaimed from the other side of the couch. 

Emma and Paul broke apart but didn’t turn to look at the screen. They just stared into each other’s eyes.  _ I’m not afraid anymore _ , Emma wanted to say. But this wasn’t a time for words. Instead, she just channeled all that adoration, that love that she normally reserved for when Paul was sound asleep, and held his gaze, her hand still lightly petting the back of his head. 

_ Somehow, you’ve become my world _ , her face said.

_ I know. I already knew _ , his answered.

The two smiled, eyes crinkling. Paul leaned forward and rested his forehead against hers. For a moment, the world seemed to stop turning, just for them.

And then, the emergency broadcast signal blared from the television.

**Author's Note:**

> some devil possessed me to write this as fast as i could. here you go, hope you enjoyed.  
> comments are always appreciated!


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